Welcome to the party: T-Mobile rumored to carry iPhone

If you’ve been a T-Mobile customer and feeling jealous every time a friend whips out that snazzy iPhone — I’ll admit I certainly have — there is good news for you today.

Merrill Lynch’s Scott Craig wrote in a note to investors that “speculation is heightening” that Deutsche Telecom (DT) will announce a deal to bring the iPhone to the fourth-largest U.S. carrier at next week’s analysts event.

That would give Apple access to 33 million T-Mobile customers and according to Craig, 4 million of those would buy the iPhone.

Some are skeptical that this will happen by next week. Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM writes that T-Mobile’s networks “simply aren’t ready yet.” The company has been recently rolling out its HSPA+ 4G network improvements to enable faster speeds for customers that already have unlocked iPhones. T-Mobile does not offer 4G LTE, but the HSPA+ is comparable in terms of speed.

Maybe this news means that T-Mobile won’t be one of the four carriers that fades away in the coming years, as COO Jim Alling discussed earlier this month. Speaking of iPhone’s, here’s a report from 9to5mac that Apple will begin selling an unlocked version of the iPhone 5 through its online store tonight.

Taylor Soper is a GeekWire staff reporter who covers a wide variety of tech assignments, including emerging startups in Seattle and Portland, the sharing economy and the intersection of technology and sports. Follow him @taylor_soper and email taylor@geekwire.com.